Sublimation(83)

“Soyoung asked me if reintegration was like dying, before Rose visited.”

“God, she’s strange,” YJ says. He sounds really fond all of a sudden. They must have been actually hanging out, outside of the favor he’s doing for her, outside of the USB drive. You thought you would like the fact that they’re friends, but the slight sliver of jealously like a sour candy bursting on your tongue surprises you.

“Death is probably bad,” you say.

“Would you want my life, if you had to choose?” he says. “Just, binarily. Between mine and yours.”

“I don’t know,” you say, and you know that he’s read the files, that he’s read your thoughts on the files, that both of you have had that thought: what if it were only you.





SOYOUNG-ROSE


Soyoung leans against the wall of the testing chamber. At this angle, she can see Gerry’s hands as he calibrates the Mitosis gate. She wishes she could ask him what he’s doing, or pull out the USB and review the calibration sequence for the various Mitosis capabilities, comparing what she’s been given to Gerry’s actions.

“What interested you in all of this?” she says.

Gerry looks up. “My parents are both instances. My mom’s from Russia. My dad’s from, I forget where, a lot of places.”

“Oh. Should I be apologizing or congratulating them?” Soyoung tries to tilt the question kind, not cruel. She had assumed that he had sprung fully formed out of an American suburb.

Gerry shakes his head, glances at her.

“Probably both, maybe my mom more than my dad. It wasn’t so easy for her. Russia, you know?”

“Not really.”

“Like I don’t think she’s allowed back in the country,” he says. “Or she’ll get like, the gulag or something.”

He gives kind of a self-conscious laugh. He punches a green button, and then turns a dial. “I don’t actually know a lot about what happened with them.”

“My mom’s side of the family is technically from North Korea,” Soyoung says. “I get it.”

“Yeah, you know.”

“Do most of the people who work here have a connection to instancing?”

“I think a lot of the people on the Condensco side have instances, but people don’t talk about it much. It’s kind of personal. I don’t know for sure.”

“Sure,” Soyoung says.

“Anyway. Ready?”

Soyoung wonders if the study, whichever study it is, is being compromised by the fact that she knows too much about Mitosis now. If instancing is about desire, which is related to knowledge—then to know too much about what’s happening might change the results. But that might not matter. The Mitosis machine supposedly bypasses intent. The only intent that matters here is her decision to walk through.

“Yes.”

He turns the machine on. She closes her eyes. She walks forward, and—

I am twenty-one years old and I’ve just gotten a phone call from my childhood friend. I haven’t talked to him in years. We drifted apart. It’s my fault, except for the fact that it’s his fault. I was angry that he asked me out. I shouldn’t have laughed. But he shouldn’t have asked me out. It ruined things.

I am twenty-one years old and I am playing a video game with my high school friends. We are all a little too old for this, but it’s school break and it’s very cozy, to be sitting in Clarissa’s basement squished between Esther and Sujit, while we yell at Yuna, who has the controller.



But I pick up. Because he is my friend and underneath everything I will always pick up, because of all those summer afternoons at the playground. I care about him.

We’re playing Myst. Myst is a really old single-player puzzle game about exploring an island that the player has been transported to through a book. We are trying to explore the island and also to find a way off the island, I suppose, although I’ve lost the plot. There are a series of puzzles that need to be solved to advance the plot.



He sounds bad on the phone. He tells me he instanced.

We used to play games like this in high school and middle school. Single-player games controlled by a single person, with the rest of us yelling instructions. Creating something collaborative out of something meant to be singular. I don’t remember why we started. We haven’t done it in years. Playing this with them feels nostalgic. It is an uncomplicated joy to yell at my friends, all of us pretending that we are younger than we are.



I ask where he is. He says he’s on the air train. I ask if he’s with anyone. He says his parents.



I remember what it was like when I was eleven, almost against my will. I hate thinking about this. I am always thinking about this.



I hear him quietly sniff. This surprises me. I don’t know why it surprises me. I just sometimes have a hard time thinking that other people have feelings.



A bad and secret part of me feels good that Yujin feels that way. I spend a lot of time pretending not to have my experiences. I like that there are people in the world who understand how I feel, or have the same experience I do. I think he might be able to. I try not to think this thought; I fail.



I ask him if he wants to meet me at my university, and if he wants to ditch his parents and talk about what happened. I say I will buy him coffee or alcohol or whatever he wants. It’s a stupid token gesture. I am trying to tell him that I understand.